Hotmail begins offering email aliases to curb spam

Sorry you had a bad experience. My experience with .Mac/Mobile Me has been the exact opposite.

More to my point, I have for years been able to create as many as five aliases and use them (for example) as return addresses when ordering online, so that the retailer can’t re-sell my true email address. I can bounce back emails from unknown or undesirable senders as an error message indicating the email address they used is no longer in service. It is quickly trained to learn and intercept spam, to the point that I almost never get any spam in my inbox; I haven’t heard from the Nigerian Prince in years. And due to the volume of email I receive (on my Mac and my Android phone) that I do want, I can estimate the uptime of the service to be excellent.

Again, I’m sorry if you didn’t enjoy the same experience I continue to have, but Apple has provided this touted feature for years. Microsoft continues to show up late to the party, no matter what medium they’re entering.

Well, anyone that knows how to use Google can see that in 2008 and 2009 (when I left) Mobile Me was the absolute worst in the business. I know several people that subscribe and they continue to complain. About slow delivery, connection errors and spam.

I only buy from reputable online vendors (Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple) so I don’t worry about giving out my email address. Aside from that, you say you almost never get spam. I never get spam. Ever. I can’t bounce an email directly through Gmail, but Thunderbird has had that ability for as long as I can remember. Bouncing doesn’t work, but I can do it.

This whole email alias thing might be useful to some, I see it as a useless feature that most people will never even make use of.

@RandyA–You seem awfully defensive. I was simply recounting MY experience, which has been generally excellent. Furthermore, the period you describe is acknowledged as a poor service period (the transition from .Mac to MobileMe in late 2008 into 2009); even Apple owned up to their errors, with Jobs commenting on how the rollout wasn’t ready when it was implemented, and the company crediting users with two comped months for their troubles. As for me, there might have been one or two days when an outage was obvious, but I had no particular inconvenience during that time: It simply wasn’t up to the standards of Apple when it was upgraded.

But to circle back to the original point, aliases have been available on .Mac/MobileMe since 2004 (I had to look it up, since I had been using them for years). While I think it is just swell that you confine yourself to only “reputable” online vendors, that surely isn’t the routine for the average online shopper, and even dealing with “reputable” online vendors like 1-800-Flowers will yield the customer months of spam when Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and various holidays approach. Since an alias can be shut off and turned back on at will, shutting off the alias after the transaction is complete effectively blocks all future attempts from the vendor–even “reputable” ones–to try to drum up additional business.

See? That was all I was saying. Glad you’re having a great time with Hotmail.

Time to educate them on the vastly superior competition.

I’ve had my hotmail address since 2004 now, have many subscriptions, use it to sign up for every website, etc.etc.etc. I don’t use any other address but my hotmail. and guess what? It works great. I get maybe 2 spam emails A MONTH. I also have a university email that I get university-related announcements from. I get at least 3 spam emails on there PER WEEK. And I use it or give it to nobody. As for gmail – features are nice, but still gets quite a bit of spam.